Treants
Treants (aka: Ents, Spriggans, Wood Giants) are large, animate, and very territorial trees. These "walking trees" tend to reside in heavily forested regions and they will protect these regions with their lives. Appearance Treants come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from six to thirty feet in height. Treants will often resemble whatever kind of "normal" trees are most common in the area where they live. This results in treants that resemble oaks, pines, birch, maple, redwoods, apple, palms, willow, cyprus, and even banyans. Though even among treants of the same "species" of tree, there is a great deal of variation when it comes to body shape. Some treants look exactly like normal trees but with a monsterous face in the center of their trunks, using their roots to drag themselves across the ground and using their branches and vines to slash and grab at intruders. Other treats have strange bipedal forms vaguely similar to a canid or a minotaur, their leafy branches resembling strange hairdos or beards. Some treants even combine the traits of the previous two body types, having slender vine-like arms and scuttling across the ground on three to five stump-like legs. It's a common theory among monsterologists that the various different treant "body types" are actually separate stages in a sort of life cycle, though the exact sequence and end-result of that life cycle is highly debated; some believe that treants start out as normal trees and end up mutating into the bipedal form, while others belive that treants start out with their bipedal form and become more sedintary and tree-like as they age. Despite these many differences and variations, all treants share a few common traits that separate them from the likes of Flories and Ya-te-veo Trees: their unusual faces, which vaguely resemble the basic structure seen in most animals and sentient creatures. The "eyes" of a treat's face usually glow deep red, bright yellow, or pale blue. Connection to Timberwolves Some believe that the legendary Timberwolves are a special type of quadrepedal canine-like Treant, as both breeds of creatures are made of living wood and tend to have glowing yellow eyes. Others claim that the Wooden Wolves are so different from "standard" Treants that they deserve to be classified as a completely seperate species. A few even believe that the term "treant" is itself an overly broad grouping and that each variation should be classified as a unique species. Behavior Most of the time, treants are in a "dormant" state similar to hibernation, during which they are indistinguishable from normal trees. However, in the event that they are disturbed from their slumber or detect some threat to their forests, they will reveal their true form and do everything in their power to eliminate the guilty party, even at the cost of their own lives. Abilities Treants appear to be quite variable even in what they are capable of doing. Some treants will launch thorny spikes at intruders; others appear to use some form of mind control to summon swarms of insects and nearby animals to attack their enemies for them; many treants will simply slash, strangle, and crush their opponents with their bare hands or vines; there are even a few reports of treants shooting their roots out from long distances and dragging other creatures into the soil to suffocate them. Whether or not all treants have the potential to use all of these abilities is a matter of speculation, as it's possible that individual treants (much like individual creatures) have different preferred fighting styles. Combating and Weaknesses As creatures made of living wood, treants have an inherent vunerability to fire. Since they are not made of flesh and are thus lacking in any kind of true organs, it is far more difficult to kill them in melee combat than normal creatures. If given enough of a break between attacks, treants have shown the ability to instantly heal any damage they've recieved, so it's recommended that you don't stop an attack until the treant stops moving. However, the best strategy to avoid being killed by a treat after accidentally wandering into its sacred territory is to retreat as fast as you can until the beast stops chasing you. Trivia and Popular Lore *There are many different myths and theories from all across the world that tell of how the treants came to be. Some legends claim that they are the souls of those who died lost and alone in the forests that eventually came to possess the physical forms of the trees. Others believe that the treants used to be normal trees that were mutated long ago by strange magical energies (either by chance or by design). *One particularly notable type of treant is the "Bog Beast," which resides in thick, overgrown swamplands and appears to be made of vines, moss, and muck rather than wood, leaves, and bark. Instead of resting on land like most other treants, the Bog Beast rests beneath the surface of the water, emerging ominously from the mist for unknown reasons. *Other classified types of treant include the Timbear, a large Ursine creature that can burst into flames when enraged, somehow avoiding harm, and the Sap Serpent, a small vine-like creature that has hard splinter-like fangs that produce a toxic sap. Fruit Bats, small flying rodent-like creatures that are made of fruit, are also said to be related to them. Inspiration *The Ents from Lord of the Rings. *The Spriggans from The Elder Scrolls video game series. *Those spikey branch throwing trees from the "My Little Pony" G1 movie. Category:Creatures Category:Elementals Category:Zoophyte